


A little piece of reality

by ToxicPineapple



Category: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Canon Compliant, Developing Relationship, Implied Feelings, Insomnia, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Nightmares, No Actual Nightmares, Post-Canon, They're just talked about, Why are all my komahina works post-game, anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:34:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24096649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToxicPineapple/pseuds/ToxicPineapple
Summary: but when he was awake, he… he knew it wasn’t real anymore. hinata was a logical person. even before undergoing that surgery that stripped from him his humanity, his compassion, everything that made him who he was, he had his common sense there to back him up. when he opened his eyes and shook off the lingering chills from his dreams, he could stabilise himself. ball up his hands in the sheets of his bed and press crescent shaped indentations into his palms and thing it’s in the past it’s over i’m okay and it would be. because it was. he wasn’t there anymore and it was over. it was nothing to… lose any sleep over.no, it was the nightmares that didn’t make any sense. those were the ones that got him.---hinata has insomnia and komaeda pays attention.
Relationships: Hinata Hajime/Komaeda Nagito
Comments: 10
Kudos: 115





	A little piece of reality

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sunflower_8](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflower_8/gifts).



> i've owed you a gift fic for ages. love you, sun.

it was never the fear of his memories creeping back up on him that kept hinata from sleeping at night.

there were no defenses when he fell asleep. nothing to stop those  _ memories  _ from becoming real again. when he was asleep, when his logic and rationality were tucked away to let his brain rest, he could just as easily be izuru kamukura again, trapped inside of a brain he no longer recognised and forced to watch his friend (his best friend) bleeding out on the dusty tile floor. when he was asleep he could be standing in the trial room amidst deafening music and the sound of monokuma’s pitchy laughter, forced to accuse his friends, his loved ones, of crimes they were pressured into by circumstances they couldn’t control. when he was asleep it all came back and it was  _ excruciating. _

but when he was awake, he… he knew it wasn’t real anymore. hinata was a logical person. even before undergoing that surgery that stripped from him his humanity, his compassion, everything that made him who he was, he had his common sense there to back him up. when he opened his eyes and shook off the lingering chills from his dreams, he could stabilise himself. ball up his hands in the sheets of his bed and press crescent shaped indentations into his palms and thing  _ it’s in the past it’s over i’m okay  _ and it would be. because it was. he wasn’t there anymore and it was over. it was nothing to… lose any sleep over.

no, it was the nightmares that didn’t make any sense. those were the ones that got him. the ones where he was irrational, nonsensical, formless. the ones where thick and stringy black goo filled his lungs and pressed in on him, on his chest, his eyes, his throat. sometimes he couldn’t even identify what was happening, only vague bright flashes of neon colour and a crawling, shivery sensation in the small of his back. those ones were the ones that unnerved him, the ones that made him avoid sleep like it was a hot coal fresh from the fireplace, because when he woke up it was impossible to tell what was real and what wasn’t. the darkness could very well have been capable of suffocating him; breathing was no less possible either way.

hinata hated feeling that way. afraid. immobilised by emotions that he couldn’t control. couldn’t stop, no less. it made him feel helpless and he  _ hated  _ that, had always hated it, but since despair, since the tragedy, since junko enoshima and deafening music and high pitched laughter-- he hated it tenfold. one hundred fold. whatever. it was multiplicative, even if hinata didn’t care for the specific numbers. helplessness was the sort of sensation that he would do anything to get rid of, claw at his own skin if he had to--

but pain often exacerbated the ugliness. never really had that stabilising, grounding effect it seemed to have on other people. that didn’t stop hinata from  _ trying  _ a few times but a success was different from an attempt. there had been so many attempts.

so most nights he didn’t sleep. most nights he stayed awake, putting his hands together to make shadow creatures on the far wall of his cottage, or else wrapping himself in three or four blankets and creeping outside. there he counted the steps until he reached the restaurant, where he could find a carton of orange juice in the fridge and then sit silently at a table while he watched the moon’s journey across the sky. sleep caught up to him eventually-- it always did-- but the insomnia was, it was a fail safe. he only slept when he  _ had  _ to. it made him feel more in control that way.

the moon was bright that night, bright enough that the sand on the beach glowed silver and the beams reflected off of the waves, almost making the ocean painful to gaze into. hinata did anyway, watching the wind create ripples in the murky water and breathing in the salt, slow, even inhalation after slow, even inhalation. he slept the night before that, so he wasn’t expecting to do so for another couple days or so. the only real problem with this system was that it was lonely, he supposed. hours upon of hours of solitude without even the sun to keep him company. if he felt like it he could make his way over to the farm, milk a cow or bury his hands in the coat of a sheep, but the farm animals made him think of nanami and thinking of nanami made him sad.

(in retrospect, he wasn’t entirely sure if nanami’s ignorance about milk and babies was an actual trait of hers, or a byproduct of the fact that the nanami he met in the neo-world program was not, in fact, nanami. hinata found that he didn’t really care that much, though. he missed both of them and wished that he could see her.)

the sand was cold, as cold as it got in the autumn months, but he kicked off his sandals anyway, slipped his bare feet under the grains until he felt the stiff, damp sand from several layers down, and then he buried them further, wiggled his toes amidst the press of thousands of sand grains against the balls of his feet. back when he was a child, he would bury his feet in sand to pretend he didn’t have them. he would stare down at his bare legs, cut off at the ankles, and giggle to himself about the prospect of decapitation. it had seemed a whimsical, laughable thing, once upon a time.

having seen what he saw during the tragedy, though, hinata failed to find the humour in such things more recently. he couldn’t really hold any bitterness towards the kid who buried his feet in the sand for a cheap laugh, anyway. things always came so much easier back then.

nowadays, hinata supposed he did it for the sake of feeling anything at all.

there was a soft patter of footsteps behind him. after spending so many years on this island alone with fourteen other people, hinata figured that he ought to have all their gaits committed to memory, but he didn’t. still, there was only a handful of people it could be. not everybody favoured going outside at night. saionji for example was still afraid of the dark. and even the bright of the moon couldn’t ease her fears. (not that hinata could blame her; demons lurked under the cover of night, after all. that was how tanaka would put it.) even if they did have some reason, and they deemed it worth braving the cold, a good chunk of them wouldn’t approach him. hinata had heard that he was somewhat intimidating when he felt pensive.

they did, though. whoever this was. and they sat down next to him too. hinata’s eyes fluttered shut-- not because he particularly cared about helping them maintain their anonymity, but more because he realised without looking who it was that took his place at his right, figured it out by the whiff of fruity (raspberry) conditioner and calligraphy ink. they were distinct, familiar smells, ones that hinata only assigned to one individual on the island. they were also the smells that he sought out, in the depths of his night terrors, but komaeda didn’t need to know that.

“isn’t it kind of cold?” his tone was light, pleasant enough that it could’ve been the middle of the afternoon and there would’ve been no difference at all in his cadence. hinata could appreciate this much about him, the implicit  _ you can talk to me if you want to or you can just let it rest  _ that came with their every interaction. it was too bad hinata struggled to articulate even the slightest affectionate thought, or else he would have verbalised it, because komaeda could seriously use the encouragement. “you don’t even have a blanket tonight.”

_ tonight,  _ hinata thought. the implication that komaeda was aware of his other excursions into the darkness wasn’t necessarily comforting. he didn’t ask, though. “didn’t think about it,” he said, though whether he was referring to the cold or the blanket, he didn’t specify, and komaeda didn’t ask. it was one of the things they were choosing to let rest. komaeda was shrewd in that way, perceptive, good at picking up on nonverbal cues. and there was a smile on his face. hinata could hear it in his words, see it even without opening his eyes. part of him wanted to but the rest of him refrained. “what’re you doing up?”

it would’ve been so easy for him to deflect the question, turn it around and make hinata flounder. “i couldn’t sleep,” komaeda was still smiling, friendly and casual, but there was a bitterness to it, a familiar, earnest kind of bitterness. hinata couldn’t tell if he was endeared to it or not. “i’ve been having a lot of nightmares recently but it’s nothing unusual. i think it might be the weather. autumn is always so gloomy, even out here. i wasn’t expecting that.”

“mm. yeah.” neither was hinata, to be truthful. the neo-world program was always so sunny. he liked sunshine, liked the warmth it cast on his skin and the way it made the green of the palm trees glow. he liked to gaze out at the ocean when it was sparkly and clear, like a glass bottle rather than a whirlpool. right now they waves were choppy and dark. there could be anything hidden within their depths. but on a summer day they were innocent and friendly. another familiar part of his home. (his home.) “did you want to talk about it?”

“no,” komaeda said. hinata hummed, low and deep in his throat, and heard a sigh from beside him. “there wouldn’t be much to talk about. the usual, you know.” he was smiling serenely, and from the way his voice hit hinata’s ears, gazing up at the sky as well. hinata didn’t know what he was looking at, though. the moon was so bright above their heads that they couldn’t see any of the stars, not a single one. “besides, i wouldn’t want to bother you.”

“you wouldn’t be bothering me,” grumbled hinata. he clasped his hands together in his lap, dug the tips of his fingers into the spots between his knuckles. pain wasn’t grounding to him, only served to muddle his thoughts further, but he did it regardless. the sort of thing that he knew wouldn’t help but ended up happening anyway, again and again and again. “i wouldn’t have offered if it would’ve been a bother.”

a low, dry chuckle, and then, “yes you would’ve.” a spike of irritation rose in hinata then, but when komaeda’s hands slipped over his, a sharp contrast between warm and cool all on their own because of his prosthetic, he allowed his hands to be pried apart, his palms pressed against komaeda’s. in the daylight he might’ve lit up like a firetruck, but at that moment he just intertwined his fingers with the other man’s, swallowing down a lump he hadn’t realised was rising in his throat.

komaeda was, by all means, leaning against hinata’s arm. he had to, in order to pull his hands apart, like he did a moment ago. the proximity was embarrassing in a far off, distant sense-- more important, it made hinata open his eyes. he said it would only be for a second, but when he met the stormy grey of komaeda’s gaze he had to pause, wondering at the concern that was layered in the depths of it. was he really that easy to read? if hinata had his way he’d make out of this interaction without even letting  _ on  _ that he was awake for the same reason as komaeda was. but his eyes were so deeply sympathetic. it was difficult to focus.

“sorry if i’m overstepping,” komaeda smiled gently. his hands squeezed hinata’s, as though to punctuate his statement. “i just noticed you haven’t been sleeping.”

“i slept last night,” hinata replied indignantly. even as he said it he failed to see a good reason to hide what was going on. not from komaeda. it wasn’t like he was going to make a big deal out of it. at least… not in a way that would be overwhelming. there were times when komaeda could be  _ so, so much--  _ so loud and so sudden and so  _ much,  _ all at once, but most times he was like this, all gentle smiles and warm hand holds and caring observations. that in itself was overwhelming really but hinata didn’t mind it. it almost made him want to pull away even more. there was something scary about the idea of confiding in somebody else.

“and the night before that?” komaeda’s gaze felt like it could pierce right through him. it made hinata uncomfortable but not as uncomfortable as it  _ should’ve  _ and that was arguably worse so he looked away. “i don’t want to put you on the spot, hinata-kun, so if i’m overstepping, please tell me.” hinata was pretty sure that he should say something but he didn’t. any words he could have spoken shriveled up and died in his throat. it wasn’t like he wanted to have a conversation about his feelings or anything it was just that the thought of telling komaeda to fuck off, while appealing most other times, felt far-off and shimmery right then, like a daydream. or maybe another nightmare. “ah. okay. well, i don’t know how i can--”

hinata was a pretty impulsive person. he considered that to be his most defining character trait, this total lack of impulse control. it wasn’t something that he really hated about himself; more just. a fact. in the way that digits of pi were just that, digits. not something to be opinionated over. he had reasonable cause to question that viewpoint when that impulsivity led him to cut komaeda off mid sentence with a hug. but komaeda was warm where the night was cold and he was wearing a cushiony jacket that smelled like lemon detergent, so hinata didn’t care. he couldn’t bring himself to.

anybody else would’ve been surprised, and maybe komaeda was, but he didn’t make a sound, not even any sharp or sudden movements. he hardly even breathed differently. there was a quiet inhalation that came from him when hinata’s chest bumped against his and that was reflexive, an intake caused by a sudden release of air. all that happened was that komaeda pulled him in closer, arms slipping to wrap around his shoulders, and a kiss, soft but lingering, was pressed to the top of his head.

hinata hated crying so he didn’t. he closed his eyes instead and gave himself up to the moment, tilting his head forward and burying his face in the clean smelling fabric that covered komaeda’s shoulder. there was an intimacy about it but beyond that it was comforting. komaeda’s embrace was tight and in some places unsteady but it was real, incredibly real, in that burning, bittersweet way that komaeda always was.

it was all hinata needed right then, a little piece of reality.

**Author's Note:**

> heehoo i wrote this in the middle of the night


End file.
